I Am Homophobic

>>>>> "jason" == Jason Jkantley Kim Antley <Jason> writes:

  jason> What the writer of this article seems to misunderstand is,
  jason> there are "rights and wrongs" in our society.  

Jason and Kim,

Your message is fascinating. Please allow me to respond by taking it
as seriously as you seem to have intended.

Your first and second sentences are delightfully at war with
themselves and with each other. You imply a strict view of moral
objectivity, but one which you've already undercut by using scare
quotes. Surely if there are, as you suggest, biblically-derived,
objective moral standards, which are grounded in the nature of God,
they don't need to be ironically (or otherwise) scare-quoted? Are you
always already unsure about the claims you will make?

         The "rights
  jason> and wrongs" in our society are clearly defined in the Bible,
  jason> the holy writing that the founding fathers of our country
  jason> clung to for dear life.  

The war rages on...

Again the strength of your claim is undercut by the oddening
scare-quotes. But let's move on: presumably "our society" means the
United States? 

In the United States, in case you hadn't noticed -- and with all the
time you must spend studying the Bible and the like, who could blame
you for failing to? -- the U.S. contains a many people who are neither
Christian nor even religious. Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs,
Jains, Baha'i, atheists all aboundeth much.

So you face a stark choice, one you may neither realize nor relish:
either all those non-Christians should, well, remove themselves (or be
removed, eh?) from "our society", or when you say "our society" you're
going to start having to *mean* the non-Christians too.

If "our society" means what it plainly says, that is, all the people
who live in it, then the rights and wrongs you insist upon are neither
"clearly defined in the Bible" (for if you admit the Hindus or Jews to
"our society", surely you have to admit the Episcopalians, radical
Catholics, and Methodists too?) nor is the "Bible" terribly relevant,
since now "our society" is full of all sorts of people who couldn't
give two hallelujahs for what it says. Even scarier, for you, they all
have their own scriptures too!

And then there's that pesky little bit about the "founding fathers"; I
won't trouble you to explain why precisely their religious beliefs are
relevant. I'll grant your assumption that they are. The "founding
fathers", as you call them, were *thoroughly* deist in their religious
and philosophical outlook; many of them explicitly rejected your
understanding of the Christian religion. I know, I know: everyone at
your church says the "founding fathers" were, more or less,
Bible-believing sons of God. Alas, everyone at your church is
wrong. Sorry.

         In the Bible, homosexuality is
  jason> severely condemned.  

Okay, I'll play along one last time: let's set aside (1) all the
non-Christian Americans as unimportant to public policy matters (which
means setting aside a great deal more in the bargain...), (2) the
religious preferences of the "founding fathers". I'll stipulate: we
should base public policy on what the Bible says.

And you thought you had troubles already? "Homosexuality" simply
cannot, as a matter of fact, be what the Bible "severely" or otherwise
"condemned". It's just not possible. Why, you sputter?

Because neither the word nor the concept appears in the Bible. And it
cannot condemn what it neither addresses nor implies.

Maybe there's a better way to make the point -- quick: does the Bible
"condemn" socialism? How about all-weather tires? Pacemakers,
artificial hearts, internal combustion engines, masturbation,
astrophysics, teen dating, virology, cliterectomies, birth control,
cosmetic contact lenses, or that cool mixed peanut-butter-and-jelly
stuff?

What the "Bible" "severely condemns" in various places is a matter of
scholarly debate, of course, since interpreting the meaning of a
diverse collection of ancient texts is not as easy as it seems. But,
let's put aside any sort of liberal fascination with stuff like
history or evidence or the like...

Even if you are true blue infallibilist and literalist about this
thing you call the "Bible" (which was put together in a long,
squabbly, political process that lasted nearly 350 years), you still
have to deal with what the *texts* say.

The Levitical prohibition, glibly taken to "condemn homosexuality",
actually condemns "men laying with other men", i.e., sex (one
presumes) between men. And of course it does so in the context of a
laundry list of ancient Jewish religious custom.

         In Romans chapter 1, it is called the
  jason> sin that signifies a person has reached the bottom of the
  jason> "perversity barrel."  

The trouble with pronouns like "it" is that they are deceptive little
rascals, they slither and slide around until you can't remember what
they started off referring to.

What you've said here is that some part of the Pauline School's
epistolary text to the early Christian community in Rome calls "it",
that is, homosexuality a "sin".

And yet, for all the times I've translated large swaths of the Pauline
School's epistolary text to the early Christian community at Rome
(which for convenience sake alone we can call "Romans") from Koine
Greek into English, and all the translations (in English, French,
German, Spanish) I've read of Romans, I've never seen any word that
could be translated by the English word "homosexuality" -- which you
don't seem to realize is a *very* recent word.

The word and concept "homosexuality" appears as often -- zero
occurrences -- as that other rhetorical wart of yours, "perversity
barrel" -- zero occurrences.

And, more importantly, is a very recent word for a very recent
*concept*, one which neither Romans nor any other bit of the Pauline
School's literature knows anything about. The other oft-quoted and
so-called "severe condemnation" of homosexuality is nothing more than
a condemnation, to be sure, of boyish temple prostitution in
non-Christian religions of parts of Asia Minor and the Hellenistic
world generally.

Homosexuality, as it's understood and practiced, that is, loving,
psychologically rich, pair bonds between men -- including an equal
range of human variations upon that notion as we can find among
heterosexual relationships -- is, near as anyone can tell, more or
less a modern social invention. Again, I'm sure this isn't what people
at your church are saying, but maybe you all can arrange a reading
circle of some works by Jon Boswell? He'll set you straight.

         We as Americans are to be kind to, and
  jason> as a Judeo-Christian nation, we are to love the sinner.  

Heh, I suspect most Jews are none too thrilled to be getting dragged
into your witch hunts. You know, it's rude to drop names like this. 

         In
  jason> the same vein of responsibility, we are to hate this sin of
  jason> perversity and teach our kids holiness, not tolerance.

I agree that your version of Christianity privileges (what it calls)
holiness over (what everyone else calls) tolerance. And that's simply
another sign of how reactionary and retrograde your version of
Christianity is. "Tolerance" as you dismiss it was, more or less, the
invention of some strands of European Christianity in order to prevent
them from setting to kill one another yet again.

  jason> Heterosexism is biblical.  

Agreed, which is only one of its minor defects.

         In short, we are to love the
  jason> sinner yet hate the sin, showing mercy and kindness to all,

Having heard that old saw far too often, I retort: I hate the cliche
"love the sinner, hate the sin", just as I hate the nasty and brutish
behavior people take it justify.

It, too, is of *very* recent, very American vintage, and has always
served as a way to tell people who's sexual interests differ from your
ow that, upon dying, they will burn in literal lakes of fire for all
eternity. But, you know, in a *loving* way.

  jason> lest we ourselves be shown cruelty and judgment by others in
  jason> our time of failure.

You mean the kind of cruelty your version of Christianity offers to
gay men and lesbians every day? *That* or another kind of cruelty?

Look, we all "get it": you don't like gay men and lesbians, what you
imagine they do makes you sick, you're scared they'll brainwash your
children, and on and on. Yeah, yeah. Got it.

Why can't you just come out and say *that*? It would have at least the
merit of being *honest*. 

Kendall Clark